Meme, gym class, synopses (numbered for your convenience)

[mrissa]

1. I never tag people to do chain memes, but I've been tagged myself: page 123 of the nearest book to me, fifth, sixth, and seventh sentences, are:

But of course Frank couldn't call him. Even his cell phone might be bugged; and Edgardo's too. Suddenly he recalled that workman in his new office, installing a power strip.

That's from Kim Stanley Robinson's Fifty Degrees Below, which I am not reading yet. A friend's manuscript is actually closer than that, but I don't really want to post bits of other people's unpublished work without their permission; it seems like not the thing.

2. Robin has, with impeccable five-year-old logic, decided that what I am doing once a week in the clinic is gym class. When they teach his body to do different things, that's gym class. So it must be with mine as well. And he wanted to know what they were doing in my gym class. I told him they were having me move my head different ways to teach my body not to fall down, and he started demonstrating moving his head in different ways in case any of those might prove helpful to me. He is the best godson ever.

3. I hate writing synopses, but timprov has an insight about them that makes me much more cheerful. "The novel is how you tell the story," he said. "The synopsis is how your Norwegian great-uncle* tells the story." This is very useful indeed.

The Aesir noir novel: Sorkvir Sturlasson gets his fanny in a sling working for the gods. Well, like you do. Uses fancy detective skills to stop Ragnarok, which was his own fool fault anyway. Also there's this girl, doncha know.

What We Did to Save the Kingdom: Ordinal Yaritte gets her fanny in a sling because she can't leave well enough alone. Well, like you do. The king is a young idiot, doesn't that go figure, and folks get worked up about it. And Yaritte can only get them partway calmed down. Isn't that a thing.

And like that. I suspect that having all synopses start with somebody's fanny in a sling might get boring to editors -- American editors; I hear tell that it would provoke quite a different reaction from British editors, as I hear that word is a different euphemism over there -- but I suspect other standard synopsis forms get pretty boring too.

Now I'm wondering which of my other relatives are useful for synopsis purposes. I think it would be hard to mark up a synopsis to indicate where my uncle Bill waves his hands in the air like giant enthusiastic parentheses. Possibly this will only work for generic rather than specific forms of relatives.

*I have more than one. Of course I do. He means the Platonic form of the critter.

Comments

[columbina.livejournal.com]

For some reason I just adore the phrase, "Isn't that a thing." Can you give me any further usage tips on this phrase, so that I may be assured of using it correctly should I decide to employ it?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's mostly for where you'd say, "Oh, what a pity," or, "Heckuva note," or, "I don't even know what to say about that."

But with intonation you can make it positive if you try really hard.

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

For some reason, I now have "Aesir, that's my baby. Noir, Sir, don't mean maybe," running in my head. So I will try to offload it into yours.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Golly. And I didn't get you anything.

[pameladean]

The synopses made me laugh helplessly for quite some time.

I can't make my books do that, though. I had Irish and Welsh and Bohemian uncles; maybe that's why.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's very different when you've grown accustomed to being patient with people running on than when you've grown accustomed to being patient with them not saying as much as you might find informative.

[pameladean]

Yeah, that's definitely it with the Irish and Bohemian parts of the family. The Welsh parts, on the other hand, don't say NUFFIN. Sometimes you just want to hit them over the head. And sometimes you realize that, quite apart from the obvious drawbacks to this strategy, you'd better not, because somebody else might then hit you over the head for the same behavior.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

After how many years in this state, I'm finally leaning the right ways to *listen* to what people are condensing down into 3-4 words and telling me.

Couldn't have gotten this far without your help. Cause, you know, the open ended question and someone's Norwegian teenager?

Do. Not. Mix.

*HUG*

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heehee. Open-ended question. Norwegian teenager. Hee. Oh dear.

*hug*

[retrobabble.livejournal.com]

3. I hate writing synopses, but timprov has an insight about them that makes me much more cheerful. "The novel is how you tell the story," he said. "The synopsis is how your Norwegian great-uncle* tells the story."

*lightbulb* Ohhhhhh! *g*

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I have a sneaking suspicion that my uncle's synopsis would be longer than the novel.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Not everybody has as much access to highly economical communications as your average Scandosotan.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I think there might have been highly economical communications elsewhere in my family, but that would have been members of the family I never knew. Moderately economical, I can do.

On the other hand, one of my parents' next door neighbours when I was little was economical to the point where I can't imagine how I'd get him to tell a story at all.

[ckd]

I love Robin's logic, and his helpful suggestions too.

Since you have extras, are you lending out Norwegian great-uncles to people who need synopsis-writing assistance? (Now I'm wondering about the Norwegian great-uncle version of project documentation.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The ones who would be really useful for this sort of thing are painfully shy and would fix that broken bit on the railing on your deck and then go away without saying anything about synopses at all.

[redbird]

Would they let me give them a cup of tea first? They don't have to say anything, though "two sugars, please" might be useful. (I have no novel to synopsize.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but older Norskies mostly drink coffee. The kind you can stand your spoon in.

[redbird]

Coffee I can do. Standing spoons, no.

[clarentine]

I think those work very nicely as short synopses. *g*

[papersky.livejournal.com]

When I see Americans casually using "fanny", a technical specific and obscene word I cannot use without quotation marks, it always makes me feel all peculiar, as I go through "Did they really say that?!" and "Yes, but they don't mean to be obscene, they just mean 'arse'" in quick succession. I feel much the same about the use of "wank" in, for example "fandom wank", because where I come from that's a four letter word.

And I think this is a new artform. I think you should get your inner Norwegian uncle to synopsise various famous works of literature, such as "Prince Hamlet comes home to find his father's dead and his mother has married his uncle, like you do, and gets his ass in a sling trying to figure out what to do about it, or whether to do anything about it at all. Isn't that a thing?" And "There were these five Bennett daughters and they were all wanting husbands, don't you know, and these two rich men came along and one of them fell in love with the eldest daughter, and then the other one and the second daughter got all tangled up about what was going on for a while, but it came out all right in the end."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The thing about usages like "fandom wank" is that we don't have that word meaning something else here. It's one of those things like "bloody" where Americans have somehow heard that "bloody" is a British swear-word and then use it as though "British" means "completely inoffensive."

It's like the inverse of the teenagers learning French who go around saying "merde" as though it was daring and offensive.

Anyway, most elderly Scandosotans who use "fanny" to mean "ass" would blush to use "ass" in front of me. Or "arse." In Upper Midwestern English, my grandfather would, if highly provoked by one of his Boy Scouts, snap, "Sit your fanny down!" But, "Sit your ass down!" is something he would never say to one of his Boy Scouts unless it was one of the older teenagers and the kid in question had been unspeakably rude, possibly in commission of a crime. So I think we might need to compromise on "rear end in a sling" for the rest of these literary works. Upon which I will think. It seems like a promising vein.

elisem can tell you the Danish expression someone ought to have used on Hamlet, which translates as, "Stand there 'til your staves fall in, why doncha?"

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I always thought that the "fandom wank" compound was directly derived from the obscene British "wank", by people who knew what it means. To me, at least, it has the same sort of connotations that "intellectual masturbation" does.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Seconding that.

[redbird]

My impression is that at least some of the Americans using the term that way have the denotation, but the connotation, just as there are more people who would say "intellectual masturbation" than use four-letter words to signify the physical act of masturbation.

[I cannot find an appropriate register for this comment. Sorry, Mris.]

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Er, you meant "have the connotation but not the denotation", right? Just to be sure.

[redbird]

Yes, thanks. (

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to puzzle it out all afternoon and I still don't get it: what does "to have one's rear end in a sling" actually mean?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

To be in a mess of self-caused trouble from which it will be difficult to extract oneself.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The nearest I ever came to being a goldfish was when I heard a serious, conscientious, pillar-of-the-community American parent saying "fanny pack".

Interesting that it's less obscene than 'ass'. Maybe it works out about the same as 'bum'?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think so. In the American idiolects I've dealt with, "bum" is treated mostly as a Britishism. But it's a pretty totally inoffensive one.

[mari-redstar.livejournal.com]

(Hi, got here random-link-jumping, hope I'm not intruding-)
About where would you place 'bum' on the scale of obscenity? I'm an American myself, of Midwestern heritage, and 'fanny' is so incredibly non-obscene to me that I can't even imagine it on the scale. It's the kind of word your grandmother (mine, anyway) says, or your great-aunt, or an elementary school teacher. I can hardly get my head around the idea of anyone being shocked by it, honestly.

(Also, I used to swear saying 'bloody' when I was a bit younger, as it was quaintly British, didn't get you in trouble at school, and was close enough to real English to be satisfying, unlike the Japanese swearwords we'd looked up in the dictionary and weren't entirely sure how to pronounce.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah, but "fanny" in British English is not "buttocks" but rather...well, to be delicate, let's say that the phrase "had his fanny in a sling" would not have meaning in the British sense, because male persons do not have such a part. The American equivalent is one of the Seven Words You Can't Say On Television. So in American English I would put "bum" and "fanny" at about the same level of obscenity, but not at all in British English.

It's like the reverse of the situation with "knock someone up" and "rubber."

And of course you're not intruding. Public posts, all are welcome!

[mari-redstar.livejournal.com]

It could, of course, be metaphorical- but, yes, I didn't express myself clearly, but I was aware the American and British meanings, ah, differed slightly in location. I got the impression sam_t was wondering if 'fanny' for us worked out about the same as 'bum' for them, and I was wondering exactly how obscene or non- 'bum' was over there. Like I said, I think of 'fanny' as a quaint word used by extremely proper old ladies, and I'd thought 'bum' was in more general circulation.

I can never remember which country uses "rubber" for "eraser" and which uses it for "condom", honestly! I've never heard anyone use the word except to refer to the vulcanized tree-sap substance in general.

(In the category of vaguely-related anecdotes of cross-ocean language mixups, I remember being extremely puzzled as a child, reading Golden Age mystery novels, at the remarkable presence of biscuits. They were very nice when slathered with butter for Sunday morning breakfast, certainly, but they seemed to have been all over the place in English country houses, and with sugar icing? Very strange people, those British.)

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

It doesn't sound like they're at quite the same level. I'd say 'bum' was mildly vulgar and slightly childish, rather than being just colloquial. It's not shocking, but not something you'd want your children to say to an older relative with Views about being Properly Brought Up. On the other hand, a pretty relaxed and informal older relative might not mind at all and might use it themselves.

I might use it to friends but probably not in the office - but that's because it's slightly childish, rather than because I don't want to shock my colleagues. I still wouldn't use it in offices where swearing is part of the culture (that's what 'arse' is for).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's funny how little we discuss the childish end of word usage. You wouldn't say, in a mixed group, "I have to go peepee," but that's because you don't want to sound four years old, not because you don't want to sound like a vulgar lout.

When I was tiny, my parents taught me to use "fluff" as a euphemism for "fart," and then there was a gap of well over a decade wherein we had really no cause to speak that specifically of breaking wind, so my mom was a little startled the first time she heard me say that someone's great-aunt made a habit of farting and blaming other people.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Yes! There doesn't seem to be a vocabulary for it (not in general usage, anyway - somebody's probably got one). I'd want to say that 'bum' is less childish than 'peepee', but that's not really an adequate way of conveying who would use it.

The act of urination does seem to have acquired a remarkable number of euphemisms of different 'ages' (for want of a better word), now I come to think about it.

I think that would startle me, too, although it would be because of my memories of my great-aunts (and therefore the behaviour I associate with the word), rather than any expectations of how you would refer to breaking wind. I suppose parents must come up against these sorts of changes in register a lot, presumably usually with less suddenness than that. I remember having a bit of a struggle with my dad over calling him 'Dad' instead of 'Daddy'.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Robin hardly ever calls me his Missa any more. Sometimes. But rarely; he is big now.

Sigh.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My British childhood book problem was "draughts." I was mightily disappointed when I found out it was pronounced "drafts" and meant the same -- that drinking a draft beer and drinking the draught the ents drew for the hobbits were far closer than I wanted them to be as a small child. I also thought that a drafty house in, say, Chicago was utterly and totally dissimilar to a draughty house on the Yorkshire moors. Or should be, if there was any justice.

[brooksmoses]

Huh. I hadn't noticed that I did that, possibly because I mostly stopped doing it about the time I realized they were the same, but yeah. Not fair.

[redbird]

This guy gets sent a long way from home with a message to a king. The king gets upset, the way they do, ya know? Then he winds up in prison, for no good reason, and has to escape across a glacier in the winter. Isn't that a thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Glaciers in the winter make everybody happy.

Where by "everybody," of course, I mean me.